An employer cannot be faulted for following public health advice even if it’s unsound, the British Columbia Court of Appeal has ruled. The decision followed four years of hearings into a vaccine mandate enforced by taxpayer-owned Purolator Inc.: "It continued to be reasonable for Purolator to rely on public health authority statements about effectiveness even if, as a matter of objective fact, vaccination had ceased to be effective." READ MORE
The Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force is hiring a consultant to work as her private secretary at an undisclosed cost despite cabinet's promise to cut spending on consultants, records show. The military did not say why none of its current 93,000 armed forces and civilian employees were incapable of filling the post: 'We are cutting management consultants by 20 percent.' READ MORE
Friends of Israel are asking Parliament to reject a petition by New Democrat leadership contender MP Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona) as discriminatory against Jews. McPherson declined comment on the petition that proposes mandatory background checks of all visitors from Israel, including Canadian citizens, and an investigation of charitable works by Indigo Books CEO Heather Reisman: 'Reject this in its entirety.' READ MORE
Cabinet is commissioning million-dollar research into impacts of its National School Food Program after admitting previous claims were guesswork. The Department of Social Development in a briefing note said it needed “evidence” to support the $1 billion program: "This is a game changer." READ MORE
Cabinet has approved a six percent budget hike for a government think tank famed for bleak forecasts of societal collapse. It was a “centre of excellence,” said a briefing note. READ MORE
It remains the only Parliament Hill structure to be razed by cabinet order, a magnificent colonial landmark, Canada’s first Supreme Court building. Here a Laval tax lawyer, Louis St. Laurent, pleaded his first federal case in 1911. As prime minister in 1956 he had it demolished to make way for a parking lot. READ MORE
Parliament for 90 years enforced a White Canada immigration policy intended to create an all-Caucasian society, literally a Great White North. It was built on crude and false assumptions of racial characteristics. Lawmakers and educators rarely speak of it today though the painful topic has inspired excellent academic research like White Settler Reserve, an exposé of attempts to create a Nordic master race on the Prairies. It was a “special experiment of immigrant colonization," newspapermen wrote in 1875. Cabinet subsidized Icelandic immigrants to colonize the southwest shore of Lake Winnipeg on territorial lands of the Cree, Ojibwe and Métis. Among the 19th century settlers were the great-great-grandparents of Professor Ryan Eyford of the University of Winnipeg, who chronicles the experiment in a crisp narrative. READ MORE
My mother knew John A. Macdonald very well. She said, “He could make you laugh at the drop of a hat.” He had snappy comebacks he used at the appropriate time. He had a very good way with people, to make them feel he was going to be a friend. He just seemed to have that magnetism. Was he an alcoholic? Today we would classify him as a borderline problem drinker. If he drank as much as everybody said he did, and accomplished what he did, I wonder what he would have done if he’d been sober all the time.
